


there is a place (for you and i)

by machibouke



Category: IU (Musician), MBLAQ
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Love, Future Fic, Love, Music, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 08:05:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7426807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/machibouke/pseuds/machibouke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A journey down memory lane, and then a trip to the very near future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this so long ago (yearsssss ago) that i forgot about it. recently, i gave it a considerable chunk of editing and, despite the fandom being a little dead, i thought i'd post it anyway!

Sunggu followed his gaze slowly, sighing. “Sanghyun-hyung, I wouldn’t if I were you. Did you know he likes her?”

“Huh?”

“Taewoon-ah. He likes Jieun.”

Partially alarmed and somewhat doubtful, Sanghyun looked elsewhere immediately. As hard as he tried to avoid looking at her, his eyes eventually found Jieun again for what felt like the two-hundredth time that afternoon. She was seated a small distance away from himself and Sunggu, face equal parts bright and serious as she argued animatedly with a guy that, unfortunately, was _not_ him – and that’s what prickled his conscious the most.

He let his eyes rake up and down the Taewoon guy for a second, disgruntled, before mumbling, “I didn’t need to know that. Why are you telling me that for?” His gaze lingers over to Jieun once more, who is now brushing bits of fringe away from her eyes after an exasperated portion of her and Taewoon’s conversation.

Sunggu just shrugged, his arms landing folded on the backpack under his chin, his smile dim.

“You’re too obvious, dude.”

Sanghyun ignores him. Taewoon was just another trainee – brand new much like himself – who had been accepted into the LOEN training program on the same week he had. Jieun seemed to have taken a particular liking to him, and although she and Sanghyun weren’t on proper speaking terms (morning greetings did not count, he told himself in resignation), he felt a little stung at the instant affinity she had with Taewoon. Their new friendship just somehow _clicked_. They were both gesturing wildly at this and that, laughing bubbles into their drinks (mostly Jieun) and trading playful banter (mostly Taewoon).

If he didn’t know any better – which he didn’t, really – Sanghyun would think they were flirting. It was all hitting a bit too close to home for him, prompting a nauseous stinging sensation to lurk in his chest. Why couldn’t _he_ have that effortless kind of friendship with Jieun? It just didn’t come naturally. That bugged him a lot, because Jieun wasn’t a special exception – being unable to naturally become friends with people pretty much applied to everyone around him. Sanghyun was more the wallflower than the social butterfly. He suddenly understood why the outgoing and bright Lee Jieun saw nothing in him.

His friend had noticed the tenseness in his body, and Sanghyun’s ever-changing expressions depending on what Jieun was doing. Sunggu smiled sadly. He also had a becoming friendship with Jieun, but tried not to brag about it to Sanghyun.

“Are you jealous of him?”

“No,” he snapped back without meaning to. Jealousy. What a feeling. He’d never contemplated if it was what he was feeling up until that moment. It didn’t really seem likely. He’d never been the type to get jealous of a guy with a girl he liked – not even back in Philippines had such petty things happened with him and his friends – but then again he didn’t have any experience with girls so how could he even know the difference? Stubbornly, he pushed the thought away and excused himself for the bathroom.

Instead, he took a sharp right turn and hurtled up the staircase to the dorms, diving gratefully into his room. For a second he hovered above his bunk and then sat down calmly, the mattress making a dull squeak beneath him. His fingers clenched around the cheap sheets and he shuddered, feeling that same sharp prickle in his chest.

He chose to ignore it, telling himself, “You’re not jealous,” his voice so deadly guttural with his squeaky voice that it barely greeted the air and only lingered before his lips. “Jealousy is for idiots. Sore, proud idiots. You are not…”

But no matter how hard he tried to tell himself otherwise, he sure as hell felt like an idiot. It was starting to show.

“Park Sanghyun!” A short-haired head poked around the corner of his doorway and Jieun’s grin popped into view. Sanghyun started miserably, wanting to smack himself for forgetting to shut the door. He hunched over and climbed properly onto his mattress, nearly hitting his head on the metal frame of the top bunk.

Jieun let herself in when all he did was burrow himself closer to the wall. “What says you to a few rounds of karaoke at the place down the road? We all have a free period before training this—hey, is something wrong?”

Because she was perceptive like that. Unfortunately, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that a teenage boy who was trying to become one with the wall clearly had something upsetting him. The closer Jieun got to him, the more she chattered about nonsensical things, and the more that bothered Sanghyun. She suddenly giggled at the look taking over his features, citing the bitter expression as completely out of place on his baby face.

“Thanks,” he said evenly ( _Baby face, she said I had a baby face_ – was he supposed to take that as a compliment or did she see him as a brother or something? Korean customs were weird). He scooted away from the wall and didn’t meet Jieun’s eyes directly. He managed a smile, although in his head all that was happening was _Taewoon likes you, Taewoon likes you – do you like him too?_ He sorely hoped not. This was all beginning to seem a little too high school for his liking.

“Karaoke. In Dong-gu,” Jieun reminded him with the keyword, grinning. “You in?”

It took him few seconds, but she took his hand in a way that made his heard pathetically flutter, and in that moment he couldn’t possibly say no. Jieun was always so accommodating. He trudged outside with her, her narrowed eyes meeting his slumped shoulders.

“Are you always this grumpy?”

“Are you always this imposing and nosey?” he shot back weakly. Jieun looked taken aback-slash-confused for a moment before laughingly saying, “Huh, so you do talk! And you’ve got some bite. That’s great!”

Going slightly red, Sanghyun positively thought of this as progress. His first conversation with Jieun, no matter how argumentative it was.

 

* * *

 

“You know, a lot of us thought you didn’t even speak Korean,” Jieun said in a remarkably quiet voice to him as they straggled along the pavement. The group of trainees were several steps ahead of them, but Jieun had chosen to hang back in step with Sanghyun.

“I don’t. Much,” Sanghyun mumbled. “Sorry. I just moved from Philippines earlier this year with my family.”

“Oh.” She smiled, semi-apologetic. “I wasn’t one of them, by the way. I think you speak okay for only living here for a couple of months, but your pronunciation kind of sucks.”

He met her smile and managed a laugh at the frankness. Somehow.

“I speak English better,” he admitted.

Jieun liked English, was studying it diligently at school.

“Use one word to describe me?” she challenged as they stopped at a crossing. She adjusted her bag and Sanghyun tapped his chin in mock thought. “Come on! We’re almost there.”

“ _You have a presence_ ,” he said enigmatically in English. Jieun rolled her eyes, completely missing the meaning.

“That’s…more than one word. Right?”

Sanghyun nodded.

“It’s hard to describe you with one word. It meant you have something about you—” He struggled to think of the Korean for the word ‘presence’, “like, you’re always there, even when you’re not.”

She nodded in pleasant surprise, and found it weird that her heart was warming. “That’s deep.”

They crossed together wordlessly, Jieun saying nothing and jogging to catch up with the rest of the group. In the space of a few steps and some exchanged words, somehow, everything had changed.

 

* * *

 

“Oh…so you _do_ like him. I thought people were just pissing around to annoy me.”

With an affronted look, Jieun’s lips curled unpleasantly the moment Taewoon jerked his head in Sanghyun’s direction. There was something so degrading about the gesture – the way he’d said _him_ as if Sanghyun had contracted some rancid disease overnight and suddenly nobody wanted to go within half a metre of him.

“I didn’t say that!”

“I’ve seen the way you look at him lately! And some of the guys told me you were pretty friendly with him on the way here.” Taewoon laughed unkindly. “It’s all the others are talking about. He’s sick, Jieun, just look at him. All conceited and strong-silent type. What a jerk.” He was suddenly all fired up, and sure as hell let all of his frustrations go in front of Jieun. “And you? What kind of girl tells a guy, who has just confessed to her, that she likes another guy already?”

Jieun balled up her fists. “I didn’t tell you that I liked him!” she barked in a furious whisper.

Now Jieun was the one exuding such anger that she flushed pink and moved away slightly. Perhaps she’d underestimated Taewoon. The whole nice-guy act from last month was a complete one-eighty to the arrogant, insensitive bastard that was sitting beside her.

“I simply told you I’m interested in someone else,” she amended crossly. She was quite glad that a few girls were standing next to her, belting out one of g.o.d’s old singles from the nineties, and that nobody would overhear them.

“Who else but him?” Taewoon scowled, much to her annoyance.

“You should leave. Like, now.” She promptly turned away and just for a second, she caught Sanghyun’s eye. He was sitting on the adjacent sofa with Sunggu. He tried to occupy his attention with a pile of napkins on the table but it was clear as a spring day that he’d been watching her very carefully moments ago. Had he heard what Taewoon said? No…that’d be impossible. Maybe he could have gotten the context of the situation just by seeing them talking?

Sanghyun looked her in the eye again briefly and stiffly angled his body in the other direction, taking a long and decisive slurp of his smoothie. He struck up a conversation with Sunggu. Jieun felt some relief in that and focused back on Taewoon.

“And for the record,” she snapped, narrowing her eyes, “ _you_ are the jerk, not him.”

Right then, Taewoon looked on the verge of implosion. His actions had just exploded in his face. He stormed out of the room before any of his friends could stop him, and majority of the boys just stared at Jieun in disbelief. She grinned and stood to join the girls for the next g.o.d homage, but felt a burning in her side that could only be emanating from one person’s eyes.

She turned while singing and smiled at Sanghyun. This time, he wasn’t even bothering hiding his stare. Both panic and euphoria filled her upon registering that.

 

* * *

 

“Okay. Group three. Lee Jieun, Woo Yeji, Cho Taewoon, Park Sanghyun.”

The mentor strode past them briskly after her announcement and moved on to the next gaggle of trainees.

 _What are the odds?_ Jieun thought gloomily. Sanghyun followed Taewoon over and she felt a surge of warmth at his appearance. At least he was here.

She glared at Taewoon loftily and let the other girl stand next to him, opting instead to lean next to Sanghyun on the wall. Returning her friendly smile, he relaxed noticeably, but one thing was chewing away at him. For the whole morning, Taewoon had been giving him dirty looks and he had no idea why. Maybe it was competitiveness? He put it down to the fact that he was excelling ahead of the other boys in dancing classes and Taewoon was probably envious of his position.

He let it slip his mind for the time being, just chuffed that Jieun was standing next to him.

“Your piece,” the vocal teacher passed them again and handed a sheet to Jieun.

“Here’s our piece,” she repeated needlessly, waving the paper around. Taewoon snatched it from her hand to read it over with Yeji, but Jieun was beyond caring about his behaviour. She knew the ballad off by heart anyway, having practiced it on more than one occasion, so the cover would be easy. On the other hand, she hadn’t thought of Sanghyun, who didn’t seem to mind but she wasn’t so sure he knew of the song.

“Do you want to go over the lyrics…?” she asked him curiously when he retained the same elusive, folded-arm stance for a solid eight minutes. “I mean…you’re not that familiar with the culture, right…so songs…”

He shook his head slowly. “I heard you singing it the other night from the dorms. Pretty sure I’ve got it down,” he disclosed with an awkward quirk of a laugh. Jieun scratched her hair with a grimace, embarrassed to some extent.

“I was just familiarizing myself with the chords…I’m sorry. I probably kept you up all night. Among other people…”

“Not really.” He changed his posture and swung back and forth on his heels, hands tucked into the pockets of his faded jeans. His face was somewhat timid as he looked down. “It sounded very nice, actually. You have a one-of-a-kind voice. Like one you would hear from a CD player.”

So, Sanghyun was making a habit of complimenting her now. Jieun didn’t thank him for the very down-to-earth comment. With the back of her neck and cheeks furiously burning, she let her short hair fall on her face and tried to focus her attention on the other groups’ performances. Theirs would be tomorrow, but everything training-related was at the back of her mind by then. She had never been the best listener, nor did she have a very large attention span, so Sanghyun’s words inevitably made the rounds in her mind for what seemed like the rest of the day.

Taewoon was right, he had always been right. Jieun hated that.

 

* * *

 

“I’m really sorry for snapping at you like that the other day…and accusing you unfairly…”

It was a Monday. Taewoon had picked the worst of days – and times – to track Jieun down and apologize for how he had treated her. She had found clever ways to avoid running into him unnecessarily around the place, like sitting on the toilet and eating her lunch, or finding herself in the silent company of Sanghyun whenever he went over his dance routines by himself in one of the practice rooms.

He was standing in front of her shamefully, his pose bent. It was nearing midnight, and Jieun didn’t really have time for this, nor did she care.

“I don’t care, Taewoon-ah. What you said was totally rude and I can’t forgive you for it. You’re a bully,” she practically snarled at him, turning on her heel and trying to walk back to her room. But Taewoon persisted, trailing her.

“Please. I’d really like it if we could be friends again.”

Jieun paused, but only to consider her own moral dilemma. She was all for forgiveness, and depending on the situation, forgetting was also on the table. But did she really want to still be friends with someone who was interested in her _like that_ and was insanely jealous about her feelings toward everyone else? Someone that thought so little of her? It didn’t even matter that he’d said it in the heat of the moment. They weren’t even together and he’d gotten that worked up over her liking someone else. Taewoon would assume all he wanted that it was Sanghyun, and though he was spot on, Jieun would never indulge him in the truth. And he wanted to know, she knew that for sure.

She said nothing else to him and ducked into her room, slamming the door shut in his hopeful face. Actions would have to speak louder than words here.

Taewoon lowered his hands into fists, defeated, and looked scornful as he stormed down the hall and turned the corner.

Four doors down, Sanghyun opened his door a peep and stuck his head out carefully. He had heard the whole argument, the pleading, and the apology that was clearly insincere on Taewoon’s part. He slipped his hand behind him on the dresser and picked up a small bottle of strawberry milk, a little note attached to it. Taewoon’s hard-headed attitude was enough to take a toll on anyone. Jieun was pretty strong-minded, but Sanghyun supposed she could do with a cheer-up.

Making sure nobody else was wandering around, and with good intentions, he padded down the corridor, sat the bottle down in front of Jieun’s door, knocked once and then bolted as fast as possible back to his own room. He closed the door carefully, the sound of his own heard pounding ruthlessly in his ears.

He heard the door open fiercely (Jieun most probably expected it to be Taewoon again coming back for another attempt) and heard a squeak of surprise.

Jieun looked down at her feet and the squashed remains of a plastic bottle underneath them. Pink milk pooled around her left foot. Her mouth hung open for a moment before her roommate appeared over her shoulder with a laugh.

“Someone likes you!” she offered amusedly. “I’ll get some tissues.”

With mixed feelings, Jieun bent down to gather the bits of plastic and the lid. A saturated sticky note was taped to the bottle with the words ‘ _For Jieun_ ’ written in neat, squarish handwriting.

Yuna got to her knees beside her and started mopping up the mess. Her eyes wandered curiously to the note in Jieun’s hands.

“Told you!” she squealed, beating Jieun’s shoulder with her free hand. “Do you think it was Taewoon? That’s really sweet, even if he is really mean.”

It was soaking wet, but Jieun held the paper to her chest. She peered down the dark, totally isolated hall expectantly, like the person who’d left the milk for her would have just been standing right there, watching her and gauging her reaction.

It hadn’t crossed her mind that perhaps Taewoon had dropped it off.

“Maybe. That doesn’t mean anything, though,” she decided firmly. Yuna wiped the last of the milk off her foot and together they returned into their room, laughing.

In Sanghyun and Sunggu’s room, the friends were having a stare-off.

“I like her,” Sanghyun finally conceded.

Sunggu threw his hands in the air. “Finally! Now, can I go back to sleep, or have you got any more creepy presents for Jieun hiding around here?”

He shook his head numbly, climbing underneath into his own bed. The creak of the mattress above filled the silence for about a minute as Sunggu rolled around for the right position, and then his sigh clouded the air.

“Hyung, I won’t tell anyone. About you and Jieun.”

Sanghyun feels the last of the nervous weight shift from his chest. He rolls over, smiling gratefully.

“Thank you.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Jieun was in the main common room a few days later, curled up in one of the suede armchairs and looking outside of the window with an idle gaze. Her eyes were tracing a certain splatter print on the window that she believed to be bird shit and reluctantly fixed them somewhere else with a crinkle of her nose. She searched for anything that could hold some useful substance, some inspiration. New songs didn’t just write themselves.

Song writing was a fairly brand new interest she had picked up seriously in the last two months or so, but her beginnings were humble. Her last incident with Taewoon gave her a lot of material to work with, but youth was undoubtedly getting in the way of making any sense of the incoherent anger she felt towards him.

Of course, when she was much younger, being a guitarist, she had tinkered around with lyrics, but now she was considering this to be a serious side-career. With her trusty guitar in one hand and a notebook lying in her lap, she thought hard about some misplaced emotions she could weave into a decent-sounding song. Without sounding typical or cliché. That was important. Sitting wedged between her teeth was a pen, teetering with a weak balance.

On the other side of the room on the floor sat a cross-legged Sanghyun, who seemingly had his nose stuck in an in-depth book on Korean culture. Of course, wherever Jieun was, Sanghyun would find the time to be with her in some way. To anyone who was looking at him outside of his bubble, he gave the deliberate impression of being immersed in reading, catching up on his traditions and customs, but, sneakily, he was stealing the smallest of glances Jieun’s way. He wasn’t sure if she was even aware he was in the same room. But he was thinking she looked a bit off today, even peculiar – for her standards at least.

 _She seems stuck,_ he thought. Already, he knew what Jieun looked like when she was missing a creative link in her brain. He entertained the stupid idea of going over to help her. What could he contribute that would be of use to her, though?

His body started to lift from the floor anyway.

As if on some magical cue, Jieun puffed her cheeks without thinking and the pen fell from her mouth. She broke from her reverie and looked around, unaware that the pen had dropped. She fixed the bunched bun in her hair and looked around instinctively to see if anyone had seen her weird moment. Her eyes landed straight on Sanghyun almost accusingly (she did this frequently now, just as much as Sanghyun did to her, because now apparently this was a thing between them).

He hastily pointed into his lap until she had enough sense to look down at her own and spotted the pen. With a laugh, she nodded and retrieved it, smacking herself lightly on the forehead.

Sanghyun just cracked a smile and hastily shifted back into a sitting position against the arm of the sofa and leaned down closely to study a particular page of his book about the economic boom of the 1970s.

 

* * *

 

On the off chance that he would be aimlessly walking up and down the dormitory halls, Sanghyun would occasionally catch Jieun lingering outside her room a little longer than necessary and knew she was expecting to run into the person who left the present on her door step. Or she was expecting another one, perhaps. Presumably more milk. He could see the look on her face – unbearably curious, foot scuffing on the floor.

And she was completely unaware that, at times, the person she was wondering about was right there under her nose.

“Who are you waiting for?” he had asked her one afternoon after returning from a painful round of vocal lessons.

Jieun scooped her fringe away from her eyes and whipped around, flustered. “Nobody!” And then she would painfully avoid his gaze until either her roommate arrived, or Sanghyun would walk away to his own room. Usually it would be when Yuna came back, then they would both scuttle in through the door and shut it.

Honestly, he was running low on cash but had another bottle of milk in his bag – banana-flavoured this time, bought by his sister for lunch earlier – and he wanted to leave it for Jieun again. Milk had an expiry date, he had to keep in mind. But he would arouse unwanted suspicion if he didn’t get his timing right. He was taking these missions very seriously. Now he was wishing he hadn’t asked her who she was supposedly “waiting for”, because, knowing how obsessive she got sometimes, Jieun would most likely be planted on the other side of her door with her ear glued to it to listen out for sounds.

Sunggu also returned at that very moment, so he reluctantly slipped inside, remaining indecisive.

A few minutes to midnight came and Sanghyun thought consistency wouldn’t be such a bad idea, so he slid outside and repeated his silent routine. Same milk, same note. His hand rose to knock on the door twice this time, but the insistent image of Jieun eavesdropping on the other side made him think twice, and he withdrew it.

Instead, he made his footsteps loud and very known on the way back to his room, closing it soundlessly just as Jieun’s door unlocked and creaked open with the very sound of curiosity.

A delighted squeal came in the form of, “Banana, this time, Yuna-unni, banana!”, and the door closed once more.

 

* * *

 

“So…um… _this_ is E-minor. And this…this must be…C-major?” Sanghyun pressed on doubtfully whilst fingering the taut strings with utter care.

Jieun snorted out a laugh. “You don’t _have_ to call it a C-major like that. C is just fine.”

“I’m such a noob.”

“What’s a noob?”

“Nothing,” Sanghyun said quickly. He strummed experimentally while holding two fingers in the E position. Jieun practically beamed and gave him an excited thumbs-up.

“You’re doing great for someone who’s never touched a guitar before!” she exclaimed.

“I’m still rubbish at playing the stupid thing,” he said, his default mood settling in on troubled. “I’ll probably forget all the chords you taught me today by tomorrow.”

“You have to give it time and you’ll gradually get better. It just comes,” Jieun assured sympathetically. She reached over and nudged the guitar to the left a little to make sure he was holding it in the optimum position. “If you’re a musically-oriented person, the instrument will listen to you when the time is right.”

It had been a great day for Sanghyun so far, even if he wasn’t feeling so great right then. Significant progress had been made. He had decided that morning to hell with being the shy wallflower that got caught looking at Jieun about twenty times a day and feeling irrationally bad for it. Her reactions towards his milk presents had given him a boost of confidence, even if she didn’t know who they were coming from. Feeling spontaneous, he approached Jieun after class and asked if she needed any help with her song writing or if they could go over a song together for lessons. His unusual impulsiveness had paid off. Delightfully, she had agreed, but he hadn’t done much assisting so far. _She_ had been doing more of the assisting – their time together had accidentally devolved into an impromptu guitar lesson for Sanghyun.

“For your first try, you’re doing great. I’d give you an A if I was teacher grading you,” Jieun insisted when his fingers became lazy and spidery, messily belting out an unfamiliar tune. “I’m self-taught, you know. I think you’ll pick it up that way too.”

“Mmm.” Annoyed with his dismal abilities, Sanghyun settled for tapping his fingers along the body to pass the time. Learning the guitar wasn’t what he’d come for – it was undoubtedly a perk, since he’d always wanted to learn – but at least he was spending time with Jieun. She was seated right next to him, pouring over her notebook full of scribbles, excerpts and lines of disconnected lyrics and crossed out mistakes. Her left foot was tapping frantically without her realizing.

“That’s a terrible habit,” he couldn’t help but point out.

“What?” She perked and distractedly lifted her foot to look at. “Oh…I do that when I’m frustrated. Sorry, Sanghyun-oppa.”

Sanghyun froze up. It was the first time she had addressed him that way, and he could tell by the way she tensed and sidled anxiously to the right that she realized this too. For the next five minutes, it was just Sanghyun’s wooden tapping and her refusal to look him in the face. She wrote a little, violently scratching out whatever she’d once thought was worth writing down.

It occurred to him that the two of them didn’t have many topics for conversation. Maybe liking Jieun was a pointless exercise if there was nothing between them. Sanghyun looked down at her book enquiringly, reading lyrics.

“What’s your song about?”

Jieun protectively held the notebook to her chest. “Oh…um…” she started to mumble, uncharacteristically short for words. “Nothing really. Just…I’m not even sure how to describe them yet. It’s a song, I think. It’s coming together. It revolves mostly around love, obviously…first love…”

She cleared her throat and glanced away. And wondered when her life had become one of those cute little high school dramas she often ate up on TV.

“Oh. Okay,” he murmured uncertainly, nodding. He had an ominous feeling that the song was based on Taewoon and her possible feelings she’d had for him, no matter that they had fallen out ages ago now. She was only taking from an unfortunate experience, but he stayed out of it.

An unconscious silence lurched between them after that and he was left dangling the guitar in his lanky, unpractised arms. Jieun had started to test out the melody of her lyrics with a small, delicate voice, and then she stopped with such abruptness that it startled Sanghyun and he almost dropped the instrument.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you…” she started. There was apprehensiveness to her voice. He looked up, smiling and grateful for a new topic.

“Yeah?”

“Would you happen to know…if any of the guys around here have been giving…giving gifts to any of the girls?”

Sanghyun feigned an incredulous expression and bit his lip hard, trying not to laugh at how perturbed her own expression was. She tried hard to keep it indifferent. “Gifts? What sort of gifts?”

“Well, milk, for instance,” she said quickly, like she’d been holding it back. It was obviously a laughable thing. “Not me! Yuna-unni, the girl I share a room with…she’s been getting these bottles of milk from someone and she doesn’t know who. It’s starting to get weird. I thought I’d ask you while you’re here and…well, you know. You’re a guy.”

Internally, Sanghyun was grinning like an idiot. She was using The Friend Card – she was so embarrassed about what was going on that she’d actually resorted to using that old excuse of the problem happening to a friend instead of you. He wondered if she knew that, generally, when a person done that, the other person would automatically assume that it wasn’t in fact the friend that it had happened to.

“You can see why I didn’t want to ask this…” Jieun mumbled with a nervous giggle and threw her hands in the air. “Of all things, milk!”

“Ha…” he muttered, only half-amused. “The guys…milk…not that I know of, no. Sorry.”

She nodded a little, looking put-out. “Okay.” Her usual smile returned almost instantaneously. “Well, maybe we should start work on our group performance now, I guess. I’ve had enough of writing this damn song for today. And judging by your overflowing enthusiasm…” She picked up his leaden arm with a grin, “you’re clearly psyched to have learned some of the guitar. Am I that bad of a teacher?”

“No, no, it was fun, really,” Sanghyun insisted weakly to Jieun’s _come on_ face. “But yeah, let’s go,” he agreed with a laugh. He set the guitar down for Jieun to pick up. She closed her book and stowed it away safely in her bag, and they traipsed out of the room together to meet Taewoon and Yeji.

“Just let me go to the toilet real quick?” Sanghyun asked before ducking into the bathroom.

Four years later on national television, Jieun would laughingly recount the story of the traumatizing sounds she heard as a fifteen year-old while standing and waiting for him to finish.

 

* * *

 

Weeks passed by, a number of them, and friends came and went. Jieun and Sanghyun had gotten considerably closer and more comfortable with each other, enough to act like brother and sister a lot of the time. They practiced covers of songs together, Jieun incorporating the guitar for melodies, and Sanghyun contributed his voice. Through all of these little bonding moments, a dense Jieun had yet to figure out that it was him that was the one still leaving her conspicuous little presents at odd hours.

She had woken up to many a doorstep surprise, now occurring on mornings in lieu of the middle of the night. The familiar knocks kept coming: little snacks, bento boxes from Japanese food vendors, candy bags, stationery sets, personalized guitar picks, a red notebook, and even more mini-sized bottles of flavoured milk.

Unfortunately, putting those happier moments aside, the weeks grew tougher and more demanding training-wise. Many of the other trainees had either been eliminated or forced to pull out due to pressure (a lot couldn’t cope with the schedules), illnesses or meddlesome parents who didn’t want their kids pursuing a meritless dream.

Jieun wasn’t too disappointed to see that Taewoon was one of them. He had been all the more hot-headed and bitter about it when he left. Jieun’s roommate Yuna had also been cleared and a new girl was assigned to share the room with her.

The new girl wasn’t actually so new, just one that Jieun hadn’t really noticed in her time around LOEN. Her name was Ayaka and she was exceptionally pretty (by most of the boy’s standards) and spoke fluent Japanese, Korean _and_ English: a company’s favourite package in a trainee. It was hard not to be stilted by this girl. But Jieun was even more thrown off when it came to light that sharing a room with Natsukawa Ayaka wasn’t enjoyable at all. Where Yuna had been supportive and even set Jieun’s alarm clock for her some nights when Jieun forgot, Ayaka was crabby for the most part and took up an unfair amount of room space with make-up products, monumental amounts of pricy clothing imported from Japan and mail-ordered shoes.

Jieun wasn’t in a position to complain though. Ayaka was older than her and a visitor in their country, technically, so it would be rude to protest. Instead of moping about her room conditions, she looked forward more to the time she spent with Sanghyun in their free time.

He had picked up the guitar well enough to start stealing one from the lower level storeroom to practice with in between lessons. Jieun liked to call these their jam sessions, but she disapproved of his taking of the guitar.

“Like they’d notice,” he said dismissively when she first stared in horror, “they have so many in that room that not even a rampant burglar would affect the supply.”

“Don’t you think…it could ruin your chances here if they find out you’ve been taking it?”

He waved it off. “I return it every night. I’m just temporarily borrowing it. It’s on loan, but they just don’t know it,” he joked with a becoming smile. “Why are you so against this? Oh. Afraid that I’ll get better than you at playing?”

His cheek made her laugh. “You wish. Fine. Keep your illegal guitar.”

At the end of that week, there were just over ten trainees left to endure the last brutal part of selective training. Jieun noticed that Sanghyun began to lose heart in doing certain things, dancing and brushing up on his guitar skills being the only exceptions.

“What if they drop you or me at the very last minute?” he would obsessively ask her, worry evident in his heavy tone. “They can do that, you know. I just feel like running away sometimes…”

“No!” Jieun looked aghast. Sure, concern was creeping up on her too, but she would never do that in a million years. Not when they were surely this close to debuting. “Don’t even think of doing that. We’re this close Sanghyun! _This_ close.” She held up a thumb and forefinger determinedly to show him, and then held his hand. He stared at the gesture depressively; little could cheer him up, and now unexpectedly, Jieun was added to the list.

“Even my sister’s doing better than me. She’s getting CF contracts and starring in music videos…and my family’s not in a good situation. I just don’t know how much more I’ll be able to take if I don’t make it.”

Jieun’s heart broke a little. Her family wasn’t in the greatest state either, with both of her parents against her ambitions and her having to leave her hometown to practically live in the studios and dorms. But she wouldn’t bring it up now. “Try to endure it. For me. Okay?” She squeezed his hand hard. “It will be so worth it in the end. We’ll be famous for doing something we take for granted every day now. That’s all you can ask for, right? To get paid to have fun. To do something you love professionally and enjoy it every day.”

Sanghyun sighed before nodding and she smiled, satisfied, and turned to fix up some of the verses she’d been jotting down in her notebook – the nice deep red one that Sanghyun had secretly given her recently.

He mumbled under his breath in English so she couldn’t hear, or, hopefully, understand. “I sure hope so.”

 

* * *

 

  
“We’re so going to debut in a couple of weeks!” Jieun cheered, ecstatic. “What if they have plans for us to be a duo? Wouldn’t that be cool? Oh my god, we could promote together everywhere, and do guerrilla concerts…”

Even she could tell herself that she was getting just a tad ahead of time. She breathed out heavily. Sanghyun could only watch on from afar, watch her excitement, and feel terrible inside.

“Yeah,” he voiced feebly. She had every reason to think their future as a duo was a possibility – the company had let them upload videos of them performing song covers together. And he knew he should have been practically over the moon about this bit of news, that they had been cleared as soon-to-debut trainees (possibly, but no one knew how far away that debut would be), but he had neglected to tell her something important.

He was considering changing companies to go and train under another. Even if he did debut under LOEN, it wasn’t the springboard he wanted into the industry.

“Actually, it’s my birthday in a couple of days, too! How weird is all of this turning out to be? Life is working out, finally. Nothing could ruin this moment—hey.” She stopped mid-sentence and it hadn’t registered quickly enough in Sanghyun’s mind that she’d stopped jubilantly dancing around her room and walked over to shake his shoulders violently. “Why aren’t you as stupidly happy as I am? You’re sulking!”

“Am not,” he denied flatly and promptly mimicked her shrieking in a girly pitch and leaping about the room like the floor was made of a bouncing castle.

She crossed her arms, mildly offended. “Not funny. What’s up?”

He slowed down and sat himself back down, hesitant to say what was really on his mind. On the one hand, Jieun would surely understand his desire to change companies – she had failed a number of auditions to many before she finally settled down at LOEN. But on the other hand, him suddenly wanting to move and try a career somewhere else – she would probably take that as rejection. Especially when she had her hopes pinned so hard on debuting together.

It wasn’t even set in stone. It probably wasn’t going to happen. Girl and boy singing duos were unheard of in the music industry. Jieun would probably go on to be solo (she had a truly stunning voice), and Sanghyun…well…he wasn’t doing the singing teachers any favours here. None of them were seeing much potential. As far as he was concerned, his future at LOEN would probably stretch as far as back up dancer. And he knew he was capable of so much more.

Jieun was glaring at him by the time he looked back up.

“It’s nothing. Not even important.”

“Don’t you dare lie to me, Park Sanghyun. I could be floating on top of the world and still spot your lying face a mile away—you’ve got a horrible pokerface, just so you know.” She plopped down next to him and proceeded to shaking his whole body. “Tell me already! Tell—”

“It’s nothing, okay?! Nothing. So drop it.” He stood up and puffed his cheeks out, slightly embarrassed. He was out the door within seconds, protesting of hunger, and Jieun was left staring at the space where he’d been moments earlier. She felt puzzled and upset, and slightly angry, because Sanghyun rarely got a temper with anyone, let alone with her.

 

* * *

 

“ _Happy birthday_!” Ayaka half-yelled in her best English. Her voice was cheerful but sarcastic at the same time as she sat a small, plainly-wrapped box in front of Jieun. She took her seat at the table for breakfast. “I got you something! Even though I know you’ll probably be ungrateful for it.”

“Some birthday this is…” Jieun mumbled moodily. She could never quite prepare herself for Ayaka’s overbearing personality. An hour ago, she had left her room earlier on purpose just to avoid this happening.

Ayaka stared at her pitifully and spooned her cereal around idly, taking a spoonful. “See? Ungrateful.” She sighed. “What’s eating you?” The question came from quick boredom when all Jieun did was take a tiny, sullen bite out of her toast. “Unintentional pun.”

“Sanghyun is angry at me…and I don’t know what I did wrong…of if I even _did_ anything wrong,” she explained in a small, strained voice that usually meant she was on the verge of tears. Jieun felt like curling into an unnoticeable ball away from everyone else’s eyes. Ayaka performed her favourite reaction of rolling her eyes.

“Aside from the guy having serial mood swings anyway, he obviously hasn’t told you.”

Jieun didn’t fancy the drawl or the tone of gossip in her voice – like she knew more than she was letting on. “Told me what.” She suddenly became crazy frantic, and was also honestly questioning the fact that Ayaka knew something about Sanghyun that she apparently didn’t. That didn’t add up. Sanghyun didn’t talk to any other girls besides Jieun.

Ayaka smiled grimly. “There’s word going around that he got a few offers from other bigger companies.”

“ _What_?” Jieun asked fearfully. Her toast fell from her mouth in a soggy pile on her place. Ayaka looked positively revolted for a moment.

“Would you mind not drooling regurgitated food all over yourself while you’re speaking to me—?”

“Is he thinking of accepting any of them?” Jieun cut across her desperately.

“I dunno. Sanghyun told Sunggu-ah the other day, and Sunggu-ah has been telling the rest of the guys. Jimin-ah told me about it. I’m surprised it hasn’t reached you yet, Ji.”

Jieun didn’t know how to process this, didn’t know how the hell she was supposed to take receiving information like this second-hand. She felt betrayed, for one thing, and upset, and angered, and all the other emotions you usually feel when a person doesn’t trust you enough to tell you something. But she knew one thing for sure – Sanghyun hadn’t bothered to tell her one word of this, and they were supposedly best friends. This wouldn’t have been so hard to bring up.

She realized, very quickly, that she didn’t care if he held it back in order not to hurt her. She was a big girl. She could stand up for herself.

“Are you going to open my present or— _yah_!”

She left Ayaka hanging and, ignoring her yells to clean up the mess, climbed the stairs up to the dorms. She guessed that Sanghyun was up there, working on the logistics of a new dance number in his room, but was momentarily surprised to find him doubled over in front of her door.

“What are you _doing_?” she remarked furiously at him. He recoiled in surprise, revealing a small, light blue box with a white ribbon adoring the top of it sitting on the floor.

“I was…looking…looking for you,” he stuttered helplessly, “and then I saw…this at your door…”

He gestured wordlessly at the box, hoping Jieun wouldn’t put two and two together and surmise that he’d been doing it all along. Jieun stumbled forwards robotically and picked it up, letting it fumble around in her hands while her anger with Sanghyun slowly dissipated. Still not looking at him, she untied it carefully and opened the box.

A beautiful light silver bracelet was nestled in the tissue paper. She took it out and studied it in wonder, letting it precariously hang from her fingers. It had small charms connected to the chain all around – a little guitar, a rainbow, a treble clef, a heart, a teddy bear, and even what she later noticed to be a little carton of milk. She laughed super loudly at the corny gesture and knew for sure it was definitely from the same mysterious person.

Sanghyun watched on silently and thought it was incredible timing. For once, he got to see her reaction to one of his presents, and the most important one of all. He would have given anything to tell her that it was _him_ who brought it for her with the last of his money he had left, plus some he borrowed from his sister, and that he’s even gone out of his way to get the little milk carton charm personally made to be symbolic. But he held back with some self-control. Patience bore rewards in the end – he just wasn’t sure exactly where they would come from when Jieun had no idea about a lot of things.

“I came to say sorry for getting angry the other day,” he said slowly, belatedly realizing he was a carbon copy of Taewoon and apologizing in the same pathetic way, but Jieun wasn’t paying attention anyway. She only had eyes for her new trinket. She asked Sanghyun to do it up on her wrist and he complied with a tight smile.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked no one in particular, wiggling her wrist so she could hear the charms tinkle together in unison. “I wish I knew who was giving me these things….saying thank you would never be enough.”

Sanghyun stiffened. “I’ll see you around then.”

Jieun gasped and stopped him with a laugh as he tried to get away.

“Sorry! I just…what did you want to say to me?”

“I just wanted to say I was sorry for getting all angry at you yesterday for no reason,” Sanghyun said weakly, his eyes straying, “and by the way, happy birthday.”

“Oh. Oh, right, thanks. No present? You suck.” She stuck out her tongue, giggling. “I’m kidding!”

He turned out the pockets of his jeans with a mock frown. “I haven’t got any money at the moment. You just might have to live with the reality of your best friend being a total cheapskate.”

“Ha- _ha_ ,” she deadpanned and looped arms with him happily. “Let’s go have breakfast. I bet you’re starving, _Cheapskate-ssi…_ ”

Ayaka was still at the table, with Sunggu next to her this time, looking highly unamused.

“You leave without even opening my present? Sometimes I think I’m too nice of a friend to you, Lee Jieun,” she told Jieun petulantly, shaking her head.

Jieun’s chest deflated at the appearance of melodrama. Ayaka could be a real mother hen sometimes. “I’m sorry, unni, I forgot!” she apologized and the second she and Sanghyun slid into their seats, she picked up the box and opened it dramatically. A flashy pair of studded black high heels met her bemused eyes.

“Uh…thanks, Aya-unni?”

Sanghyun laughed outright.

“Those will definitely _not_ suit you.”

“Every girl needs a good pair of heels,” Ayaka insisted with a dirty look Sanghyun’s way. “I imported them especially from Manhattan for you, even asked my mother to pick them out. You’ll thank me when you get older! And mind you, those were not inexpensive! Don’t go wasting them in one night.”

Jieun snorted silently to herself, muttering, “Highly doubt it,” only loud enough for Sanghyun to hear. He grinned. She placed the dazzling shoes back into their box and shoved it between her feet. She wasn’t even remotely close to being a typical girly-girl and certainly didn’t have a penchant for heels, so she had no intentions of wearing them around anytime soon.

Ayaka was in the middle of giving her and Sanghyun a look before catching sight of the new addition on Jieun’s wrist as Sunggu slurped up his cereal noisily.

“Jieun-ah, that’s such a pretty bracelet! Did _you_ give it to her? Oh, I take it you two patched things up about you wanting to switch, then?”

She fired most of the questions at Sanghyun, and he could only look at her bizarrely.

“Wha— _OW_!”

“ _You_!” Jieun suddenly screamed, her contentment completely gone, and poked him hard in the arm. He flinched violently as a flurry of punches rained down on him. “Why—didn’t—you— _tell_ —me—about—wanting—to—”

“Can you please explain to me why you’re physically abusing me? I have no idea what— _OW_ —you’re on about, Jieun!” Sanghyun gasped in shock, rubbing his now throbbing arm up and down. Already it was starting to turn red; he was wearing a loose-fitting white tee. “God, you’re violent for your size…”

Jieun aimed for his side now. “You know _exactly_ what I’m—”

“Keep it down, will you?” Ayaka interrupted distastefully. “People are looking. Mentors are coming over.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Jieun snarled, “It just never occurred to me that this…this selfish idiot was thinking of ruining our dreams of debuting. Of course you’re not going to take any of the offers, right?”

Sunggu was giving Sanghyun a pointed _dude, I told you so_ look. Sanghyun was reminded of the conversation they had a couple of days earlier, the topic being the sake of Jieun. He was unhelpfully mouthing the words _big mistake_.

Sanghyun ignored him. “ _I’m_ the selfish idiot?”

“Yes!”

He didn’t care if he hurt Jieun now—most of her accusations were unfounded anyway. Not even his feelings for her would get in the way this time. He had heard the rumours going around that apparently hadn’t reached Jieun herself yet, miraculously.

“You’re got everything you need already, your future is set. It’s _none_ of your business what I do with mine, because we’re two completely different people. It’s up to me. Just leave me alone and deal with your own life!”

Ignoring her livid face, he said goodbye to Ayaka and Sunggu and retreated to his room.

The moment he was in through the door, he locked it and cried. Jieun didn’t chase after him, understandably; didn’t bash on the door or knock on it angrily like she would have any other time. He had pulled out the lowest of the low remarks and had failed to tell her the one thing that concerned not just him, but her too. So he didn’t expect her to want to see him for a long time.

He slid down the back of the door, eyes closed, and pulled the letter from his pocket. Unfolding it, he glanced at the top of the paper where the fancy company logo was printed, and then looked at the bottom guiltily. There, on the line, his signature was already written.

A few more tears fall from his eyes, and he tears the paper in half, and then in quarters.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Jieun was the only one who got to debut in September of that year.

Sunggu stubbornly kept training with Sanghyun but neither of them were getting anywhere. Ayaka disappeared somewhere along the way, probably back to Japan where her roots were.

Sanghyun made a small cameo in Jieun’s debut video. He thought the song was beautiful, every shade of Jieun in the one song. She had since made a name for herself, and even adopted a new stage name that he still couldn’t get used to calling her by.

They kept up an act for nearly a year. The incident of Sanghyun wanting to switch companies so early clearly still stuck with Jieun and caused a rift between them. It wasn’t a major one, but it was noticeable in her actions. She was no longer obligated to stay in the dorms at LOEN, and moved to a nearby suburb to be near to Sanghyun. They were still friends. Sanghyun admired her success, even more so because she was still so young. Sometimes he went to visit her and they would sing, sometimes she would drop by the company building to record songs, and they would share some good times just like always. There was always that underlying hesitation there, though. Undeniably.

One morning in August the following year in 2009, Sunggu came stumbling into the studio where Jieun was carefully going over the background music of her latest song. Their new friend and felloow trainee Hyemi was trailing close behind, looking just as concerned as him.

“I can’t find Sanghyun,” he announced worriedly the second he thought Jieun could hear him. She noticed him and pulled her headphones off.

“What?”

“I can’t find Sanghyun. Anywhere.”

It was a dreary Saturday morning outside. Knowing Sanghyun, he was probably cooped up in some practice room downstairs, perfecting a new routine.

Jieun told Sunggu this matter-of-factly. It didn’t concern her that much anymore what Sanghyun got up to in his free time. Both her career and his problems had caused a bit of distance between them.

“No, he isn’t. He isn’t in the cafeteria or in the building at all.” He stopped suddenly and brought his voice down a notice so that only she could hear. The producers milling around weren’t interested anyway. “Ji, could you come here…for a minute?”

He looked guilty when she set her tools down and reluctantly shuffled outside. She tapped her foot the moment they stood together as three, a combination of frustration and impatience fuelling her bad habit. In Sunggu’s hand was a piece of folded paper.

“I found this on my bedside table. His side of the room is empty, Ji. You’re not going to like it, even if you are still angry with him. Sorry.”

When she shrugged as if to say again that she no longer cared what Sanghyun did, he wordlessly placed it in her hand and pulled on Hyemi to follow him away.

Jieun watched his back leave, then looked at the note in her hand. She unfolded it with a brief exhale, scanning the words quickly.

_I’ve taken up an offer from a new company. The world star Rain-ssi manages it, and he’s looking for a trainee to fill a spot. I’m hoping it’ll lead to something good. I got the transferral this morning and I’m cleared to go. Wish me luck, Sunggu-ah. I’ll miss you guys. We should catch up as soon as possible when we have time._

_Sunggu-ah…Tell Jieun that I didn’t mean anything I ever said to her. Please. Because I can’t. She’s going to do great. I’m sorry._

 

_Park Sanghyun._

 

* * *

 

In 2010, they reunited briefly to do a show together, and that was uncomfortable enough, considering. Getting back together on national television wasn’t quite the meeting that Sanghyun – now going by Thunder (or Cheondoong) – had been hoping for. But he supposes, despite the awkward silences and the forced nature of their air time, that it went well enough, because Jieun personally sent in a request to his company for a collaboration on one of her upcoming album songs.

Cheondoong agreed to the request, and Sanghyun couldn’t have been happier. But that was the very last time they saw each other in person, and a lot of things still hadn’t between straightened out between them.

 

* * *

 

_**October, 2011** _

_Why does time go by so slowly?_

_Only when you watch it,_ Jieun thought. With a clock sitting front of her and ticking at the speed of a snail, she exhaled sadly and braced her fingertip against the glass that protected the face. Time had always fascinated her one way or another. She liked pretending that she had powers, dragging her finger along the glass like it was the one controlling the movement of the hand. She smiled this time though, doing the same and imagining that the minute hand was whizzing fast, way beyond its capabilities – the second hand catching up with it – so that it showed twelve o’clock. Midnight. But, in reality, it was still dawdling behind her very non-magical finger and showed the right time: eleven hours, fifty-four minutes, and thirty-two seconds.

“Come on!” she huffed at it. “Go faster…six minutes won’t hurt anyone.”

There was a specific moment she was waiting for – and six minutes, as miniscule as they seemed, were taking forever to pass. Time sure was a manipulative thing when you took the time to consider it. She picked up her pencil and started to lazily doodle in her latest notebook, the ninth one since her trainee days. She still kept every single one, stacked neatly in the corner of her shelf.

Broken lyrics come from the pencil, along with little caricatures possessing questionable body parts, some small very badly drawn hearts, numbers, a cake, and finally, much to her amusement, the name _Park Sanghyun_. The things her subconscious did were funny sometimes, and sometimes not, taking advantage of her absentmindedness. She grabbed her eraser and rubbed the name out.

She looked up at the clock again, expectant, and it was few seconds past eleven fifty-nine. She perched her chin in her hands, dropped what she as doing and smiled more as each second went by. At last they struck twelve and continued to move as if nothing had happened. But something had.

“Happy birthday, Sanghyun-ah,” Jieun whispered, brushing away the eraser shavings from her cake drawing. She imagined the candles going out. If she had even the smallest knack for cooking, she would have baked a cake, but she was not going to run the risk of burning her apartment down tonight.

Jieun traced the drawn cake with her fingers and then touched her cheek, looking at the clock. She started murmuring a few words under her breath, putting them together to sound good enough for a song, and then they became lyric material. She scribbled them down on the opposite page of her weird doodles, yawning.

_you and i, there’s only a little bit left / i don’t know when or what time, but in future / where you will be, if by any chance, i ~~wander~~ get lost and wander, help me recognize you _

_Help me recognize you,_ she thought. _How?_

She looked at the rubbed out area where she had written his name and it hit her.

_help me recognize you / call out my name._

 

* * *

 

 

Somewhere in Seoul, Sanghyun felt an odd wash of cold air blow over him in his sleep. He jerked out of his blankets. When he looked around and surveyed the room, he saw that not even the window or the bedroom door was open. He glared at the air conditioner on the wall opposite him and his head thumped back down on the pillow in exasperation. Byunghee had forgotten to turn it off again after yet _another_ late-night exercise session. Great.

He rolled over noisily, throwing his body weight all over the mattress just to annoy his roommate dozing below, and returned to sleep.

 

 

* * *

 

_**epilogue, late 2016** _

Six years later, Jieun is in a better place. Emotionally, romantically, financially, and in every other sense of the word “better”. Giha is wonderful as a boyfriend, and despite the age gap that the entire of South Korea seems to be complaining about and judging her for, she respects him and loves him even more for it. They work together well. She feels great for once, like everything is just falling into place. Marriage could even be on the cards somewhere in the future.

So it had to be right then in her life that fate decided to drop Park Sanghyun back into it. It wasn’t even the chance meeting she had had in mind five or six years ago when she had still hoped to come across him.

And honestly, if he hadn’t called out for her, she would never have even noticed him in the first place. She almost dropped all five of her shopping bags in surprise when she heard that voice calling _her_ name.

She had monitored him over the years, sure. Watched over his success, witnessed the sudden but controlled disbandment of his group. He had willingly departed with Lee Joon, and Jieun had respected him quite a lot to make a decision like that. Because the Sanghyun she used to know devoted his everything to a project. MBLAQ had clearly been his life, and everything he had been working towards, and to walk away from that voluntarily when a contract was up…Jieun admired him greatly. But she had not called him to offer support or sent him an encouraging text. They were still friends in some sense of the word, but not close like that.

Now though, now…they were both so different. They had changed substantially. Both older, more wiser, experienced the wonders and downfalls of life left and right, but mostly importantly both still intact. Jieun no longer saw the Park Sanghyun she had once taught guitar to; the one who would practice routines more often in his room rather than the rehearsal rooms because it was embarrassing with the other guys; the one who said goodbye to her with a letter that wasn’t even addressed to her.

But her anger towards him over that had long since subsided.

Sanghyun sidesteps her and picks up her bags, ushering the two of them through the crowd. He had once of those generic white face masks on his face, not the usual heavily-styled ones he used to be photographed wearing as a member of MBLAQ, and like Jieun he had a beanie pulled over his head. They stopped by a little recess between two buildings and he set her shopping down.

“Banana milk, huh?” he asks, poking his finger through one of the bags and laughing softly. “Didn’t think you were a fan.”

He was only twenty-six, but god, he was so _different_. Jieun could feel her heard sinking with every movement he made.

“I like it,” she insists strongly, swatting him away from her shopping. “I’ve liked it ever since our old training days.”

His eyebrows rise slightly and he pushes down his mask over his chin. Little bits of brown hair poke out from beneath his hat.

“I never saw you drinking it back then,” he teases.

Jieun sighs. Call her nostalgic, but seeing him again makes her think of nearly everything from that tumultuous era in her life. The deep ridges in Sanghyun’s fingers that left him hissing in pain after a session on the guitar. Her roommate’s antics; Ayaka, was it? She wonders where Natsukawa Ayaka is now.

But most of all, those gifts that started out as little humble bottles of milk and progressed as the days went by, into the notebooks and food. That bracelet…she had lost it a long time ago during a music video shooting in Venice.

“I don’t know if you remember,” she starts ambitiously, pulling her coat up to her face when she seen some people looking back twice at her, “but I told you in passing about some creep giving the girls presents of milk back then. I asked you if you knew who it was.”

“I remember. Vividly,” Sanghyun assures with a transient grin.

“Well, I was actually the recipient of those weird gifts,” Jieun tells him with a faraway laugh. “And by default, I started to like all kinds of milk. I blame that person to this day for my liking of banana milk. Although, towards the end, the generosity got less weird I guess.”

She plucks the bottle out of the bag, unscrews the lid and takes a large gulp of the milk. When she’s finished, she gives a small smile and deposits it back into the bag.

“I’m really sorry about your group.”

“It was bound to happen sooner than later anyway,” Sanghyun says a little too quickly, as if he’d had the answer prepared for ages now. “I don’t know if it was released to the public or anything, but tensions were rising within the company after one of our EPs fell flat. The sales weren’t happening. And then we just kind of…separated and fell apart.”

Sanghyun’s face was rueful as he leaned against the brick wall. He gave Jieun a look. It wasn’t anger, or incredulity, or sadness; it was just an expression that Sanghyun had created all on his own. It didn’t have an emotion; it was ambiguous. But it still made Jieun feel terrible.

“I liked you back then. A lot,” Sanghyun suddenly blurts out, his voice unusually calm. “I have no idea if you knew…”

“Oh, I had an idea. A vague one,” Jieun tells him teasingly, wiggling her finger in front of his face. “I just didn’t have it in me to do anything about it. You were so cute, really. And I was caught up with the idea of wanting to debut.”

Sanghyun coughed out a laugh. “You must think I’m a weirdo confessing to you eight years later. And, oh god…you have a boyfriend now. I completely forgot. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Jieun bites down on her lip. “If it’s any consolation, I liked you too. Like I said—I didn’t have it in me to do anything about it.”

She wants to call him by his name, but she isn’t sure which name is right. Does she close the distance between them and address him by his first name? Or does she hurt his pride and call him by his old stage name? She isn’t too sure what he goes by these days.

“And I…”

Expectant, she glances up at him and waits, but silence ensues. Sanghyun looks like he wants to say something else; it’s sitting right there on his face, screaming _there’s something I need to tell you_. But taking his hesitance into account, it’s probably something she doesn’t want to hear.

They smile at each other briefly before Jieun says, “Whatever you’re going to say, don’t. This is what I needed, Sanghyun-ah. It is really good seeing you again.”

“Ah…you too,” Sanghyun admits. “You…you change your number a lot. The one I have saved in my phone is disconnected.”

“Really dedicated fans tend to find out that information in _weird_ ways, I have to keep replacing it.”

“Yeah.” He looks down sheepishly. “I don’t know if it’d be okay with Giha-ssi, but could I get your number? I’d like to stay in touch with you, Jieun.”

 _Oh_. The way he just casually said her name. Jieun suppressed a sigh and nodded, taking his proffered phone and entering in her number. She thought better of it quickly and instead opened a text message and typed out her LINE holder. She was fairly sure if Giha knew how she was feeling towards Sanghyun right now, he would certainly _not_ be okay with him having her number. But there was nothing she could do about feelings these days. If she felt something significant, it was likely to go within the week.

But not seeing Sanghyun for so long had stirred something inside of her that she couldn’t yet put a time limit to. Who knew how long this feeling was going to overstay its welcome this time?

“I’ll see you, then?” He nods.

“Of course,” she says feebly, but her smile was bright as she scooped her bags back up and he pocketed his phone.

Sanghyun walked back into the thicket of people, waving goodbye behind him. Jieun seemed genuinely happy. That was really all he could ask for her, after all these years. They had both finally found contentment. Well, one of them – Sanghyun wasn’t too sure of his own future yet.

As he got on through the crowd, he pulled his head down and felt a familiar sting in his chest that was akin to the first he’d experienced when he first seen Taewoon and Jieun talking all those years ago. The difference being, now, he had enough dignity to shove the feeling down and enough sense to push his selfishness aside to acknowledge that she was happy now, and he wouldn’t dare ruin that.

He pulls out his phone and doesn’t see a new number entered anywhere, no “Jieun” in his contacts. It sends a surge of panic through his heart; she hadn’t trusted him enough with her number. He opens his messages and sees a draft there with a username written. He laughs out loud at her strangeness and opens up his LINE app to add it.

 **psh** **\- 10:45am  
**_test test test, 1, 2, 3_

 **이지은IU - 10:46am**  
**_hello there, stranger_  
** _**it’s ard to type with hands ful of bags you know** _

**psh - 10:46am**  
_sorry  
_ _I’ve been meaning to tell you this for ages and I couldn’t do it in person just before. It was me behind the weird milk gifts and all that stuff_

 **psh - 10:50am  
** _jieun?_

 **psh - 10:50am  
** _or do you prefer IU? I don’t know._

 **이지은IU - 10:52am**  
__**no, sorry!!**  
__**I just, I just got in through the door these bags are damn heavy**  
**milk!**

 **이지은IU - 10:53am  
** _**I kind of figured it was you, mr. mysterious** _

**psh - 10:53am  
** _really now_

 **이지은IU - 10:53am**  
_**yep.**  
_ _**and actually, i stepped on that first bottle of milk by accident, you know?** _

**이지은IU - 10:54am**  
_**didn’t get to appreciate that first strawberry drink** _ _**> :(  
** **yuna-unni wiped it off my foot** _

**이지은IU - 10:54am  
** _**sanghyun~ or do you prefer thunder or cheondoong or just doong? I don’t know** _

Sanghyun laughs as he walks into Starbucks.

 **psh - 10:55 am**  
_sorry, I just recovered from the shock of finding out my first gift to you was wiped off your foot  
_ _ayaka was right – you’re still ungrateful_

Jieun giggles at her phone as she puts a bag of rice under the cupboard. Sanghyun had the memory of a dog. Her eyes trail over the calendar on her wall and focus on the date.

 **이지은IU - 10:56am**  
_**you should come over for christmas next week. i’m trying to cook.**  
_ _**I’ll send you my address later on, okay?** _

**이지은IU - 11:04am  
** _**hello?**_

* * *

 

 

On December the eighteenth, Jieun opens her door to a knock and finds the tiniest bottle of banana milk on her doorstep, with a note saying _I’ll be there, Jieun_ stuck on it.

_P.S. Merry Christmas in advance!_


End file.
